This invention is directed to a jewelry setting for holding and securing decorative gem stones such as diamonds or other precious and/or decorative gem stones and, more particularly, to an assembly capable of holding and securing a plurality of diamonds or other gem stones in a frame-like setting without the need to separately manually secure each individual diamond or stone.
Throughout this application the decorative gem stones to be mounted in the subject setting will be referred to as diamonds, for convenience, it being understood that other precious, semi-precious or non-precious decorative gem stones could be used.
Diamonds are typically secured to a setting with prongs. A plurality of prongs, four or six, for example, are conventionally provided around the periphery of the diamond to fix it in position and to insure that it cannot move laterally. Each prong must be individually tightened against a side edge of the diamond so that it has no lateral motion. In addition, each prong tip is bent around the top of the diamond so that the prong tips grip the diamond. In order to adjust the prongs against the diamond so that it is secured in the fashion described just above, a laborious manual operation must be performed. Several time-consuming steps must be completed for each diamond. When a setting is to carry several diamonds, each and every diamond must have the same sequence of steps performed for it so that all of the diamonds are safely secured to the setting. Consequently, a considerable amount of manual labor is expended on a multiple-diamond piece of jewelry. This significantly adds to the time and cost required for producing jewelry.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a jewelry setting particularly suited for holding diamonds or the like, and which can be assembled quickly, easily, and reliably with relatively unskilled labor.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such a jewelry setting having a minimum number of parts.
A further object of the present invention is to provide such a jewelry setting which is relatively inexpensive and easy to manufacture.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide such a jewelry setting which is decorative so as to enhance the appearance of the jewelry.